in verso, by Jeremy Stewart

 

 

the sea as a desert
longs to cover land
in drownland
make no land but sea
the rain is the sea over the land
aerial sea on
sea      overland
& overleaf
land would forget the touch of sea
mind of land on edge knows a sea
that sea unmakes land into sea
rising sea makes itself known to land
land breathes underwater
over land over
in verso
what moods arise from sea
will be none
but what mood has, you can know
reflected in or on water
to speak of that of which
we cannot speak without
speaking of it
set our words in spirals
pretty as pinwheels
around a round O or square
narrower at the neck
tapered to pieces
a papered concert
m(o)ist // dew/y
consider lightning
step down immensities of rain
into house power
invoices singing
ink to stepwise soak a sheet
of paper to blue edges
I don’t live here
by night the flat black sea

 

Jeremy Stewart's book In Singing, He Composed a Song (U Calgary Press) was shortlisted for the 2022 ReLit Award. Stewart won the 2014 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry for Hidden City (Invisible). He is also the author of (flood basement (Caitlin). His next book, I, Daniel: An Illegitimate Reading of Jacques Derrida's "Envois," is forthcoming in 2025 (Peter Lang Oxford). Stewart lives in Vancouver with his partner and children. He once dropped a piano off a building.